Beer: Ratings & Reviews

Reviews by abedenbaugh:

4/5 rDev +7%look: 4 | smell: 4 | taste: 4 | feel: 4 | overall: 4

A: A dark black color with an off white head. The head has medium sized bubbles and stayed for awhile.S: It has a very sweet aroma. Some alcohol in the nose. Also a little bit of a candy smell.T: A soft roasty flavor up front. The mouth feel helps make everying more rounded in the beer. Some coffee. Hints of red wine. A little bit of bitterness in the end.MF: Medium-heavy mouth feel and medium-high carbonation.D: I enjoyed this beer a lot. The mouth feel really makes the beer more rounded and helped all of the flavors go well together.

More User Reviews:

Pours close to an opaque black except for just ahint of ruby at the bottem of the impy pint glass,a thinner mocha colored head atop.Deep raisin and espresso roast coffee in the nose with some molasses in there as well.Full on dark fruit and alcohol sweetness hits the taste buds up front the sweet alcohol is tasty but dangerous,dark roast coffee has a hefty presence as well with a light drying earthiness in the finish.A very nice impy stout and I think Eal River is organic right?

AromaVery sweet. Caramel and chocolate maltiness. Not very strong aroma but I can tell this is going to be big. Very malty, no hops detected at all.

PallateVelvet silkiness. Very smooth and thick but not sticky. No bite at all; I don’t know if that’s good or bad in most people’s eyes but for a thick Imperial Stout, that’s just the way I like it.

TasteMy first impressions went like this:“Hmm. This is kind of boring. I’ll hold it in my mouth for a while to see what I can detect…….not a whole lot is changing.”

After I swallow….

“Wow! Excellent coffee after taste! Very good finish!”

After a few more sips my impressions mellowed out again. It’s not very complex. Apart from the surprise ending, there isn’t much to this brew at all. It’s very malty and that’s good but it didn’t change much. It’s not very strong, there’s almost no hint of alcohol or hop flavors; it’s just…sweet.

OverallDon’t get me wrong, this isn’t a BAD beer. Not at all. In fact I’ll probably buy it again. It’s very drinkable, especially for an Imperial Stout. But that’s sort of the problem, I could gulp this thing down if I wanted to. When I buy an IMPERIAL Stout I want it to make me wince a little bit. I want to have to sip it slowly and think about the way the complex flavors are changing in my mouth. This beer looks, smells, and feels excellent. But the flavor is just a little boring for an Imperial Stout. Like I said, I’ll definitely buy this again but it’s not going in my list of favorites.

Pours a dark brown and becomes a black color with a a big head. The head dissipates and leaves a full coverage.

The aroma is nice, full of coffee and sweet cocoa. It is well blended with slight roasted notes very nice.

The taste start with a sweetness of malt to begin. The next flavors are fruity and hints of chocolate, almost like a chocolate covered cherry or raspberry. The chocolate taste come in at the end and leaves a slight velvet feel in the tongue.

(My wife said this is a raisin beer)

For a 9.5% there is no telling watch out as this goes down easy. Esp being that it doesn't really feel like or have the body of a RIS

22 ouncer, w/o vintage/freshness/bottling data, c'mon guys doesn't this style deserve some sort of consumer info? Anyway, this one pours dark dark mahogany, very dark tan head, tightly knit showing better then average retention, and moderate scattered lace. Rich burnt malty, chocolaty, raisin nose. Full flavor RIS, lots of chocolate, black coffee, figs, raisins, gooey brownies. Yummy stuff, nice cold weather sipper, or would be great with a rich dessert or perhaps with some robust BBQ. Perhaps a bit thin in the mouth feel to qualify as a world class offering, but this one did not disappoint. Stout lovers, go get some and enjoy.

Infinitely dissatisfied with this one. Poured clear black with red edges. I say clear because you could see through it to some degree. Minimal lacing, short, bubbly tan head. Flat, musty caramel and malt aroma, some coffee, and thin cocoa powder. Taste was watery and weak. Some coffee and chocolate materialized as the beer got very warm, but before that, this was a grainy, soupy, earthy malt beverage. A bit astringent at the end. Imperial Stout? I think not.

Tap@Eel River. Rich and sweet, with some welcomed acidity and bitterness, oily, licoricy, roasted, long finish, good stuff. Not a style i generally mark low anyway, so most of the time its gonna get an OK score, but this was a middle of the road imperial stout, tasty stuff.

This seemed pretty exotic. An imperial stout I've never heard of from a brewery I've never heard of. Worth a shot, right?

Poured the beer from the 22 oz. bottle (pretty bottle, too; big picture of a raven on an orange background) into a pint glass. The brew poured an almost opaque black with ruby tints when held up to the light. Only a small head on the initial pour (though the refill gave me a nice, frothy tan head) with moderate lacing.

I guess I missed out on all the smelling fun because the only smell I could discern was tannin. It smelled heavily of alcohol - almost wine-like - with a faint, faint hint of roasted malts in the background. The alcohol smell was overpowering though; my buddy and I both had this at the same time and the smell just overtook the entire room.

It tasted how it smelled - the alcohol taste was more upfront than any other brew I've had in a while. Once it warmed, the flavors became more prevalent (and quite good!) and chocolate, roasted malt, and roasted coffee become discernible.

Mouthfeel was a bit thinner than expected considering the thick pour, but overall not bad. Though there was a prevalent alcohol smell and taste, there was little bitterness in the mouthfeel which made it nice and drinkable.

Thus the drinkability factor remains fairly high. I understand it's a 22 oz. bottle and it's 9.5% alcohol, but I could probably drink a couple of these in an evening (and wouldn't doubt I'd be drunk after three of them). It goes down super smooth and I think this is one of the few beers that, as it warms, it tastes 100x better than fresh out of the bottle cold. Recommended.

Pours a typical pitch black with a half finger dark tan head that melts very quickly to a ring of sticky tan lacing.
Aroma is a mild coffee and chocolate mix.
Mouthfeel is creamy, thick and rich.
Taste is again a typical IS espresso and dark bitter chocolate with a nice malt sweetness balancing the bitterness of espresso coffee and bittersweet chocolate.
Aftertaste is mostly the bittersweet chocolate with a nice alcohol warming.
Not a spectacular Imperial Stout, but not bad by any means.
This one is very balanced with no surprises and no disappointments.
An excellent 'go to' Imperial Stout if it is available to you.
Thanks to beautiful kolohoe for this bottle (and another to cellar..woo hoo!)